Giving New Life to Old Guitar Strings

If you're a musician or you spend a lot of time around musicians, you probably know how often strings break on oft-used guitars. But do you know what happens once the guitar has been restrung and the old strings have been replaced? The old strings usually get thrown in the garbage, resulting in a waste of bronze, steel, and nickel. To help cut down on destructive metal mining and the tons of metal disposed of annually, ChasingGreen decided to do some research on how guitar strings can be re-used.

UPCYCLED GUITAR STINGS OPTIONS

The Second Strings Project (SSP), founded by Darryl Purpose and Kevin Deame, has delivered over 20,000 sets of used guitar strings all over the world since 1999. SSP puts these otherwise discarded strings in the hands of musicians who can use them and keeps music alive. You can save your mostly full sets of acoustic guitar strings in their original packaging, if possible, and send them to:

Second Strings Project
P.O. Box 234
Nederland , CO 80466-0234

You can purchase a Build My Bracelet from Wear Your Music for $50, mail your own strings to them with a copy of your order, and you'll receive a personalized guitar string bracelet with your initials stamped on it!

View the rings, bracelets, necklaces, pins, and earrings available online at the Strings and a Dare website, and get inspired to put your own guitar strings to use in similar ways!

Cut a guitar string down to size, poke both ends into wine corks, securing with hot glue if necessary, and you should have yourself a homemade cheese cutter!

Use guitar string as wire to hang pictures on the wall.

AudiyoMusic makes guitar string jewelry and sells it on Etsy, donating 25 percent of her profits to cancer research. The style is somewhat similar to Wear Your Music, but much cheaper!

Collect about 30 old guitar strings and follow the instructions found at WikiHow to make a beautiful piece of art!

Comments:

Rachel
on
July 11, 2012 at 12:17 p.m.

very cool ideas thanks so much for sharing!

Smilinsteve
on
July 15, 2012 at 10:24 a.m.

Awesome ideas...and awesome green remedy

Rain
on
Oct. 16, 2016 at 10:22 a.m.

For those that aren't interested in reuse of their strings, are there places to donate? Possibly local music or jewelry shops could be a middle ground?

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